Plastic Injection Moulding Specialists. Est 1948.

Stereo Lithography – Using a vat of UV-curable photopolymer liquid ‘resin’ and a UV laser to build parts a layer at a time. On each layer the laser beam traces a parts cross sectional pattern on the surface of the liquid resin. Exposure to the UV laser light cures or solidifies the pattern traced on the resin and adherezs it to the layer below. Stereo Lithography is also commonly known as 3D Printing,. Optical fabrication, photo – solidification, solid free-form fabrication and solid imaging. Prototypes made by SLA can be machined and can be used as master patterns for injection moulding, thermo forming, blow moulding, and also in various metal casting proccess.

At S.B.Weston we will always encourage prototyping of your product in order to realise design aspects which can not be fully appreciated through computer rendered models. Prototypes are valuable for gaining an insight into how the product will perform and what its limitations and weaknesses may be. Understanding problems from a prototype allows the design to be easily be amended well in advance of tool production.

There are many available prototyping methods. We can machine plastics, wood or metal and where possible we will always work in the same materials as the intended final production version. Ensuring that the functional and stylistic aspects of the prototype are acurate to the production version is of optimum importance.

We transmit CAD information from files supplied by our designers, directly into our HERCO CNC milling machine allowing us to work on prototypes very quickly and accurately.

There are certain types of product where we will use Vacuum Forming instead of the traditional milling from a solid process. The process is most commonly used to produce product packaging using a material such as HIPS High Impact Polystyrene but is also very effective for many types of prototypes.

In the past we have manufactured prototypes using methods such as  Stereo Lithography.